This invention concerns a comprehensive information system and architecture for use in clinical care delivery and optimization.
Critical care delivered in ICUs (Intensive Care Unit), ERs (Emergency Room), ORs (Operating Rooms), for example, and some other specialized clinical settings, is an area of medicine where improvements have significant life or death impact. As a minimum such improvements ameliorate the critical condition of patients treated there. Specialized personnel (doctors, nurses), equipment (monitors, infusion devices, ventilators, vital sign detectors, etc.), highly efficient drugs and special-purpose disposable devices (e.g. catheters) contribute to the success of critical care delivery. An important component in this setting is the information processed. Specifically, information elements of importance include the available data on the patients history and daily improvement, vital signs indicating patient status and stability, medication plans, but also medical knowledge in general and broad personnel experience (i.e. knowledge gained from a large number of cases) by doctors and nurses.
Each of the above critical care contributors are periodically examined and hopefully improved. However, such improvement tends to occur in a haphazard and piecemeal manner. For example, new ventilators with sophisticated gas valve controls refine the dosage of anesthesia applied with gas to improve patient care. Also smart alarms generate alarm indications from combined vital signs thereby helping to avoid unnecessary calls of the nurses, and better focus attention on critical situations that are real.
Despite such limited optimization of the components in critical care and other clinical settings, further improvement is possible by combining smart devices, integrated information processing, and aggregated knowledge derived form large case databanks.
A system according to invention principles delivers such improvement and addresses associated problems.
A system holistically improves critical care delivery by providing a technical combination of medical information processing devices providing flexible parallel access to static and dynamic patient data as well as medical information relevant for a particular application. A medical information system processes information from multiple sources suitable for access by healthcare personnel for use in clinical (e.g., critical) care delivery. The system includes a communication interface for receiving information from patient monitoring devices and for bidirectionally communicating with a hospital information database containing patient records. The system also includes a data processor using the communication interface for acquiring patient record information from the hospital information database and for acquiring information from patient monitoring devices. The data processor updates the acquired patient record information based on the acquired information from the patient monitoring devices and communicates updated patient record information to the hospital information database. A display processor initiates display of the updated patient record information to a user.
In a feature of the invention, the system includes a data analysis unit for analyzing stored patient parameters by correlating stored parameters, patient record information, corresponding medical outcomes and medication database information to identify alternative medication options and improve decision processing.
In another feature of the invention, the data processor combines acquired medical parameter information and an acquired patient medical image to provide a composite image for display and storage.